Effective assessment provides information to improve learning and teaching.  Children receive regular feedback on their learning so they understand what it is they need to do better in order to achieve their potential.   We give parents regular reports on their child’s progress so that teachers, children and parents are all working together to raise standards.

The aims and objectives of assessment in our school are:

• to ensure that children at Birkenshaw Primary School become inquisitive, self-motivated, aspirational learners;
• to enable children to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do in their work and help children understand what they need to do next to improve their work;
• to allow teachers to plan work that accurately reflects the need of each pupil;
• to inform the Senior Leadership Team and SEND Team in order to strategically plan provision across phase group, e.g. allocation of staff, intervention, use of support.
• to provide regular information for parents that enables them to support their child’s learning;
• to provide the Senior Leadership Team and governors with information that allows them to make judgements about the effectiveness of the school.

How are children awarded a grade in the no-levels system?

Birkenshaw Primary School have followed national guidelines and devised our own system to assess and measure pupils' progress. These statements provide parents and teachers with information on how they achieve for their age. These include the following criteria:

What about children who are below the expected level?
Where children are working below the expected standard for their age group, they may be assessed additionally using a measure appropriate to their individual level of attainment in order to measure progress.  This may include the expected standards of an earlier age group to theirs, Pre Key Stage standards, P scales or using BSquared.

Statutory Assessment

Which statutory assessments will my child take?

This test is designed to indicate whether a child is able to phonetically decode and read words. Children are shown a number of words (both real and pseud-words) which they have to be able to read using their phonic knowledge.

Your child’s teacher is responsible for judging the standards your child is working at in English reading, English writing, mathematics and science, by the end of Key Stage 1. To help inform those judgements, pupils sit national curriculum tests in English and mathematics, commonly called SATs. They may also sit an optional test in English grammar, punctuation and spelling. The tests are a tool for teachers to help them measure your child’s performance and identify their needs as they move into Key Stage 2. They also allow teachers to see how your child is performing against national expected standards. The tests can be taken any time during May and they are not strictly timed. Pupils may not even know they are taking them as many teachers will incorporate them into everyday classroom activities.

Further information can be found here: